Living la vida non-loca

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Umm, I haven't posted for a while. Blogger's all different. Not sure I like it. Hmmmm. I see I can now strike through my words with ease. And change font color? or background color? Maybe I do like it. We'll see.

So. My fifth grader, Julio, is a relatively cool kid as far as fifth graders go. What this currently entails is wearing summer clothing despite the fact that we are well into winter in these parts. If it's below 32 we've got a deal where he wears pants to school over his shorts and then strips down once he's there. I haven't seen his winter coat all season-if it's really cold he wears a sweatshirt. We got in a big "discussion" a couple of weeks ago because it was 3 degrees out (windchill below 0) and he was headed to basketball practice-I told him to put some pants on over his shorts and he freaked, "Stop treating me like a baby-I'M ELEVEN!!!"

And showing such good judgement, what was I thinking?

Yesterday I was taking the kids over to my mom's to decorate Christmas cookies. It was probably in the high 30's. He started to head out to the car in a t-shirt, shorts and BARE FEET. I mean, why should he wear shoes? He was just going to remove them the second he got in to the house so, really, what's the point of wearing them in the car?

Duh!

If he starts acting like a teenager 2 years early-does that mean he'll come out of it 2 years sooner or will I just have 2 extra years of it?

Monday, November 14, 2011

Walking in heels for me is not a comfortable task. I've never been good at it-but I had hoped that after 37 years of life maybe it wasn't too noticeable and I wasn't too awkward. Is it asking too much that after 10 years of life in Latin America where all the women seem to don heals to go to the grocery store and school functions-that just a little of that would rub off on me? Just a teeny, itty-bitty bit?

Today, as I was walking through the hall at church, a older woman was coming towards me and after watching me for a second, cocked her head to the side and said, "Oh honey, what did you do? Are you hurting?"

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Today in the grocery store I ran in to my friend from Columbia. We chit-chatted in Spanish for a few minutes. When we were done Pedro asked me what language I was speaking (he has obviously abandoned his Mexican roots).

I told him I was speaking Spanish to which he replied (with awe in his little voice), "How do you know everything, Mom?"

Monday, November 07, 2011

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Except that it was a really heavy, wet snow that brought down a lot of branches. My parents had some serious tree fatalities. :(

This afternoon we made this:

Margarita wanted a "traditional" winter snowman-but I finally convinced her that a Halloween snowman would be so much funnier given the date. Poor Pedro's worried his costume's going to be stolen tonight. It's so cold out though, I really doubt it (and if it is, I really hope there's another one at Target).

Here's Juan Carlos "holding" our little Snow Vader.

The funny thing about Colorado is-the snow will all be gone by tomorrow afternoon and the sun will be out. I love it!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

I don't know how another two weeks have flown by. Nothing very blog-worthy has happened-just a blur of running from soccer, football, and swimming practices and games. Soccer has come to an end-Juan Carlos had the goal of the season last weekend as he headed the ball into the goal. Poor Pedro had the croup and missed a week of school but is doing better now.

The biggest event of the last two weeks is that I was released as a counselor in the Relief Society (woman's organization) at church and was put back in with the 8 and 9 year old Cub Scouts which is what I did last year from August through December and I loved it. It's grown a little since then-instead of three boys now we have nine.

I'm happy to be back with my den for many reasons:

1) Very few planning meetings2) Three one-hour den meetings a month-you get a week off every month for pack meeting. We've got three adults-so we're each going to be in charge of ONE den meeting a month (totally manageable)3) No den meetings over Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring Break4) It's a great program with tons of ideas out there for help5) I get to have fun with Juan Carlos who thinks it's awesome him mom is one of the leaders6) 8 and 9 year old boys are super easy to please-not a lot of complaining if you put a little effort into your meetings7) The program, which requires continual record keeping and advancement, fulfills my organizational needs to organize, plan ahead, and keep meticulous records.

Friday, October 07, 2011

Another week has flown by. I would have posted earlier (ummm, sure...), but Margarita has been heavily involved with her science fair project until late every night which involves using my laptop because the "family" computer has a dinosaur version of Word (according to her).

Fall Colors

Last Friday Pedro, Guapo, and I went up to the mountains to check on our lovely house that we no longer are able to use due to soccer games, football games, basketball games, swim meets and such. So we decided to take the afternoon and go just for a couple of hours so we didn't miss the leaves (like last year).

It was beau-ti-ful.

Guapo loves this picture that he took; I think I have lion hair:

Remember Quakey? Yes, we still have him.

Fall Sports

After being drug to his siblings organized sporting events for the last year, Pedro has been looking forward to his chance to shine. I finally gave in and signed him up for "PeeWee Soccer". It was a pretty lame program run by college age girls that were more interested in their iPhones than the cute little 4 and 5 year olds (you can feel the enthusiasm in the photos below). But, finally, in their last two practices, instead of playing freeze tag (a critical element of any serious soccer program), they actually had a little scrimmage.

Pedro rocked!

Look at him going in for this goal-and against 2 goalies nonetheless:

So cute.

Fall Grapes

We have great grapes in our backyard. People far and wide (in our neighborhood) talk about the wonderful grapes they've eaten over the years from our yard. Unfortunately, Guapo trimmed them back so far that we only got like 6 this year (we each got one). Fortunately, our neighbor didn't trim his back and therefore had a bumper crop that he had no interest in harvesting.

Here's Guapo picking them (didn't you know grapes grew on trees?)

Just look at these babies:

This is pretty much all we did last weekend:

We made 5 1/2 gallons of juice that is de-li-cious. I am now making grape jelly from the juice. I tell you, I'm a domestic goddess. And, there are still more grapes out there. (Guapo doesn't know it yet, but he's going back up the ladder when he gets home. I'm not letting them go to waste.)

Fall Obsession

I'm still pretty big into my food storage kick these days. I figure it just makes good sense what with food prices constantly on the rise. I'll have you know that today I took a Sharpie and wrote the expiration date so it would be easily visible on each of my 56 boxes of cereal. And then I alphabetized them.

It made me *so* happy.

I hope you're all enjoying your fall and that you have a great weekend. :)

About Me

Hi! My name is Gabriela. I am mom to Margarita (13 1/2 yrs), Julio (11 yrs), Juan Carlos (8 1/2 yrs), and Pedro (4 1/2 yrs) and loving wife to Guapo. I am a recovering expat who rently returned from a 9 year stint spent in Venezulea, Mexico, and most recently, Brazil. No more maid, no more driver...just lots of laundry, cooking, and time in my minivan. It's all good. :)